Title: Black Beauty
Author: Anna Sewell
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 230
Rating 3.5/5
I’m going to be honest, I didn’t exactly fall in love with this book, but that’s pretty much a personal preference thing rather than because there was anything wrong with the novel. I can actually put my finger on exactly what the problem was: I just don’t like it when stories are narrated by horses, which is why I wasn’t a particular fan of War Horse by Michael Morpurgo, either.
Still, this was the last book that I had to read in a box set of children’s classics that I own and so now that it’s done, at least I can tick it off. And actually, I enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting to, and I can totally see why it’s considered a classic – even if being told a story by a horse made it difficult for me to suspend my disbelief.
I also thought it was interesting to read this from an animal rights perspective, although I’d argue that these days, we rarely “need” to use horses at all. Sewell did a great job of showing the different attitudes that different types of people have towards animals, including by showing that some people can be assholes. All in all, I guess it was pretty good.
